


Descent Into the Maelstrom

by tigerbright



Category: Haven - Fandom
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Childhood, Conspiracy, F/M, Other, The Guard, [trope] Above Good and Evil
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-22
Updated: 2013-12-22
Packaged: 2018-01-05 15:32:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,221
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1095669
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tigerbright/pseuds/tigerbright
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Things never get better for Jordan.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Descent Into the Maelstrom

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Azar](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Azar/gifts).



Mom's Trouble activated at the worst possible time, when Jordan was sleeping happily in Dad's spot while he was away with the Guard. Mom had a nightmare just as Jordan kicked out in her sleep… It was a miracle, the doctor said, that Jordan had survived. Perhaps being family gave immunity.

It was the opposite with their cousins… they experienced the excruciating pain, but Mom inflicted it. Simon Crocker killed her Great-Uncle James, and her cousins' Trouble ended. She wished it had been her grandfather, not theirs.

Watching TV, they would wear layers of clothing to insulate Mom's Trouble, so that Jordan could cuddle with her mother… but then a head would bump a chin, or a pant leg pull up over top of the socks, and skin would touch skin, and Jordan would have to leap away swiftly. Often, she was in bed for the next several hours, her father sitting with her, holding her hand, while her mother sang gently, guiltily, her own pain showing through every moment.

Jordan desperately missed sleeping with her parents after nightmares.

Her parents slept in separate beds, of course. Snuggling only with Dad just wasn't the same, and seemed unfair.

Jordan set her jaw. if her parents could live and love with her mother's Trouble, she would too.

\-- 

Dwight was a bright point. Being seven when he was ten was absolutely awesome. He taught her how to say "the dog ate my homework" with an earnest, open face. He could fix any broken toy brought to him. Even more importantly, he knew her mother's Trouble and didn't fear it 

Dwight even helped hide the Troubles. And there was a lady named Lucy Ripley who helped people too, sometimes. She was a little weird, always wearing black, hardly ever smiling. But she helped. She hung out with the Teagues at the newspaper, came into the school a lot to talk to kids and teachers. She tried to catch Jordan's eye; Jordan ignored her.

Just after Jordan's eighth birthday, Lucy caught up to her on the street.

"I can fix your mother's Trouble, Jordan, but there isn't much time."

"I heard you'll go away soon and take the Troubles with you." She'd overheard the Guard meeting. It wasn't eavesdropping when people were shouting under her bedroom.

"I will. I'd like to figure things out, but that will have to wait for the next me."

"When the Barn comes, Mom can hold me? And Dad?"

"Yes."

"I can wait till then. Thanks anyway."

\-- 

The Guard knew that the Troubles would come again. The Rev knew the Troubles would come again. Chief Wuornos knew when the Troubles would come again; he and the Teagues kept their own counsel. 

She knew that each little know-it-all group had their little genealogy books, tracking where Troubles were likely to break out. Lucy was gone and Simon Crocker was gone too, because she'd killed him.

There was a rumor that since Lucy loved the Colorado Kid, putting him into the barn would end the Troubles. No-one believed it.

Jordan learned to hunt and shoot and move with savage grace. She finished high school with good-but-not-outstanding grades, staying well away from the clowns and druggies, keeping abreast of the cliques and pranks, keeping her own mental notebook of allies, and enemies, and enemies of enemies. 

After all, she'd need these lessons if she wanted to move up in the Guard. One of her teachers suggested she go to college and major in political science ("closest you can get to rhetoric, these days") and she nearly laughed in his face. The Guard needed her as a gatekeeper, and waitressing allowed her to pay the bills at the same time. Nevertheless, she read her way through college bookstore assignment lists as she sat and waited in hotel rooms and on stakeouts, learning to help people escape.

Only a few days after the Troubles began again, one of her Troubled charges turned on her, thinking her an easy lay. She was unsurprised that her Trouble activated. She was a little surprised by her own joy in his pain.

It turned out that turning a little feral was not an entirely bad thing, in defense of other Troubled people. 

"You can't do this every time, Jordan," Dwight told her. "I don't like who you're turning into. You don't have to be the human taser."

"It's the only real skill I have, Dwight. It's not as though anyone cares about my brain enough to listen to what I say."

\--

Audrey was not Lucy. She was so very much not Lucy. In fact, Jordan had more in common with Lucy than Audrey did.

Cops, she noted, were annoyingly and high-handed regardless of agency.

And yet.

She thought, once, briefly, "If she's immune to the Troubles…" and shut that thought down. Locked it away. Dwight saw her looking, though.

"You wouldn't be the only person to want them both," he said cheerfully. "Stand in line."

"Not a chance. Too close to Crocker."

\--

Dwight's Trouble was more dangerous. More treacherous.

"How can you be a cleaner, when…?"

Dwight shrugged with old pain. "My daughter died because of me, Jordan. The least I can do is to keep this town alive and well until Audrey goes back to the Barn."

"Will she go?"

"She has to go. She's a good person. She'll go. Heck, she might figure out how to stop the Troubles once and for all -- she's working harder on it than even the Teagues."

He put his hand on her leather glove. "You can do it, Jordan."

Of course she can.

\-- 

It should not have surprised her, she knew, that day when Dwight trusted Crocker absolutely. The phrase "trust, but verify" was made for Dwight. 

"I'm sorry, Dwight. We're all out of pie."

\-- 

She rubbed her arms as if she, not Vince, had been tied up in a barn for hours.

I picked the wrong Crocker,, she thought bitterly. But at least I've tracked down the right one.

She looked up at Duke's chin. "Look, Duke, I'll get Wade. He sees you, he's just going to attack. I'm the one who's offered him the secret knowledge, the one who--" 

"The one who didn't see that my little brother was more than just an asshole at the end of his marriage? Yeah. Me too."

"He wanted to have the life that you're living, Duke, and he had it when you disappeared, and he wants it back."

"Well." Duke looked down at her. "He can't have it. Are you going to make him stop trying?"

"I'm going to try. I'm -- I'm leaving town, I'm done, I can't be in Haven any more. I'll find him for you, I'll make him turn himself in."

"You'd better." Duke's eyes were flinty as he met hers. "All these years, I tried to keep him out of Haven, and you brought it to him."

\--

She didn't know what to say to Wade. Something, anything at all, to get the look out of his eyes… the look that first rapist had given her, sizing her up as prey, pressing her buttons, making her consent. Worse. It was her fault, she had to fix it, Wade, please, stop, it's not right, it's not what I wanted... 

The stab, when it came, should not have been a surprise.

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from a free improvisation by Lennie Tristano: [here's a nice animation to go with it](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4fNXylop2w&noredirect=1).


End file.
